| My thoughts and prayers are with those that have lost their lives and those left behind. It is unthinkable how an accident like this could have happened; any unit left on the track should have been equipped with some sort of train protection equipment. On normal railways the signals are controlled by a series of track circuits connected to the rails the passage of a train operates a track circuit and changes the aspect of the associated signal, so if a unit is left on the line ahead of if you should have a broken rail the signal will advise the driver of the state of the road ahead. I found the following…. The principle of the propulsion system in the guideway makes collisions between trains virtually impossible. If two or more trains were ever simultaneously in the same quideway segment, they would be forced by the motor in the guideway to travel at exactly the same speed in the same direction. They could not meet either in a head-on or rear-end collision. Even a collision with another transportation mode is, for all practical purposes, excluded because the Maglev guideway is built without intersections. The majority of the guideway will be in an aerial configuration (elevated) or in a tunnel section and any at-grade sections will constructed where there are no roadway crossing requirements. One can only assume that the other unit on the track was not maglev compatible …… |
Pudong Airport Maglev in Depth